At least 20 million children worldwide would benefit from Pediatric Palliative Care (PPC) annually, and eight million children would need specialized PPC services. In the USA alone, more than 42,000 children, 0–19 years, die annually; fifty-five percent of them are infants younger than one year old. Interdisciplinary PPC is about matching treatment to patient goals and is considered specialized medical care for children with a serious illness. It is focused on relieving pain, distressing symptoms, and stress from a serious illness and is appropriate at any age and at any stage, together with curative treatment. The primary PPC goal is to improve the quality of life both for the child and for his/her family.Sadly, advances in the control of symptoms in children dying of life-limiting diseases have often not kept pace with treatment directed at curing the underlying disease. Data reveal that the majority of distressing symptoms in children with an advanced serious illness (such as pain, dyspnea and nausea/vomiting) are not treated, and, when treated, therapy is commonly ineffective. Emerging evidence shows that palliative care involvement results in improved quality of life, as well as prolongation of life.High-quality pediatric palliative care for children with serious illnesses is now an expected standard of medical care. However, there still remain significant barriers to achieving optimal care, related to lack of formal education, reimbursement issues, the emotional impact of caring for a dying child, and most importantly, the lack of interdisciplinary PPC teams with sufficient staffing.Fortunately, considerable advances have been made in recent years providing PPC around the globe both in resource-poor and resource-rich countries through care provided at children’s hospitals, outpatient palliative care clinics, palliative home care, and free-standing children’s hospice houses. This book, authored by leading authorities in the field, is dedicated to describing existing gaps, as well as the achievements made in clinical care, education, training, and research.

Greenhouse-gas emissions have become one of the most impacting environmental issues in today’s society. A rapidly increasing trend in global CO2emissions particularly since the early nineties (23.64% since 1990) has led to the generation of about 50,000 million tons of CO2–equivalent (eqv) worldwide in 2010. According to mainstream climate experts, the increasing concentration of greenhouse-gases is having a warming effect on the world climate. To slow down global warming, there is a global focus on reducing greenhouse-gas emissions. Life cycle assessment in green building implementation is the focus of this Special Issue.

Scholars contributing to this special issue on “Family Communication at the End of Life” have provided evidence that communication is vital for terminally ill individuals, family members, and healthcare/palliative care specialists. Overall, the fifteen articles in this special issue focus on five questions: First, what are the trends regarding different approaches for beginning the conversation about death and dying earlier rather than later? Second, who is making the end of life decisions and how are they made? Third, how does age and disease impact the way that families communicate at the end of life? Fourth, how does good communication (i.e., satisfying for all participants, effective for addressing needs, fulfilling goals) impact the myriad of complex issues at the end of life? Fifth, what is the significance of exploring and valuing the perspective of the family members’ experiences and recollections of their communication at the end of life with their terminally ill family member as well as with the healthcare providers? Overall, the scholars emphasize that focusing on family communication at the end of life is crucial for improving medical, psychological, and relational outcomes for those dealing with the death and dying process.

Accumulating evidence suggests that not all obese subjects are at increased cardiometabolic risk and that the “metabolically healthy obese” phenotype may exist in the absence of metabolic abnormalities. Limited data regards the determinants of metabolically healthy obesity exist, particularly in relation to genetics, dietary and lifestyle behaviours. In light of the current obesity epidemic, it is clear that current “one size fits all” approaches to tackle obesity are largely unsuccessful. Whether dietary, lifestyle and/or therapeutic interventions, based on stratification of obese individuals according to their metabolic health phenotype, are more effective remains to be seen, with limited and conflicting data available. This book includes original research articles and reviews of the scientific literature that contribute to our understanding of the role of clinical, biological, genetic, and environmental factors in metabolically healthy and unhealthy obesity.

ca. 200 words; this text will present the book in all promotional forms (e.g. flyers). Please describe the book in straightforward and consumer-friendly terms.[Vitamin C is synthesized by almost all animals. However, for humans, it is a vitamin that needs constant replenishment in the diet. While its role as an anti-oxidant and for preventing scurvy have been known for a long time, novel functions and unrecognized associations continue to be identified for this enigmatic molecule. In the past decade, new details have emerged regarding differences in its uptake by oral and intravenous modes. While vitamin C deficiency remains largely unknown and poorly addressed in many segments of the population, novel pharmacological roles for high-dose, intravenous vitamin C in many disease states have now been postulated and investigated. This has shifted its role in health and disease from the long-perceived notion as merely a vitamin and an anti-oxidant to a pleiotropic molecule with a broad anti-inflammatory, epigenetic, and anti-cancer profile.This Special Issue comprises original research papers and reviews on vitamin C metabolism and function that relate to the following topics: understanding its role in the modulation of inflammation and immunity, therapeutic applications and safety of pharmacological ascorbate in disease, and the emerging role of vitamin C as a pleiotropic modulator of critical care illness and cancer.]

The book contains a collection of articles dealing with how the extraction of mineral resources can be considered in environmental analyses such as Life Cycle Assessment (LCA). The consumption of resources, e.g., metals, is increasing strongly worldwide. This is associated with more energy use; environmental pollution; and social, economic, and political consequences. An increase is also expected for the coming decades. At the same time, modern products and technologies, even in the field of renewable energies, require a large number of critical raw materials. A crucial question here is the exhaustibility of natural resources. What is the relevance of resource depletion today? Must a geological shortage of metals be expected in the foreseeable future? How could such a thing be considered in the LCA of products and weighed against other environmental aspects? The articles in question have been written over the past three years by leading experts in both geology and environmental sciences and show the breadth of the controversial discussion.

Wounds and the many associated problems have challenged health care providers for centuries and today, despite the wealth of knowledge available, neither the incidence nor prevalence of wounds is reducing. Furthermore, in view of our changing demographic profile and the projected increase in the older population it is likely that wound management will become an ever increasing burden to the individual, health care services and society as a whole. The annual incidence of wounds in the EU-27 is approximately 4 million, and between 25% and 50% of acute hospital beds are occupied by patients with a wound, with up to 60% of these representing non-healing wounds (infected surgical wounds, pressure ulcers, leg/foot ulcers) The increasing prevalence and incidence of non-wounds healing is closely linked with quality of care and, as such, these rising figures reduce society’s confidence in the health service’s ability to deliver care that is timely, appropriate and effective. Thus, for those involved in this specialist area of clinical practice, the fundamental goal is to improve clinical outcomes, reduce the burden of wounds and improve health related quality of life.In this Special Issue “Wound Care” in Healthcare, we invited submission of manuscripts exploring contemporary issues in wound care. By devoting a special issue to wound care, we endeavoured to provide readers with a comprehensive reference source, outlining key areas of interest in this important aspect of clinical practice. The response to the call for manuscripts was fantastic and, as a result, we were able to include both original qualitative and quantitative research papers in addition to review papers, thereby providing readers with a wealth of valuable information pertinent to wound care.

This Special Issue covers a wide range of areas—including building orientation, service life, use of photocatalytically active structures and PV facades, implications of transportation system, building types (i.e., high rise, multilevel, commercial, residential), life cycle assessment, and structural engineering—that need to be considered in the environmental impact assessment of buildings, and the chapters include case studies across the globe. Consideration of these strategies would help reduce energy and material consumption, environmental emissions, and waste generation associated with all phases of a building’s life cycle. Chapter 1 demonstrates that green star concrete exhibits the same structural properties as conventional concrete in Australia. Chapter 2 showed that the use of TiO2 as a photocatalyst on the surface of construction materials with a suitable stable binding agent, such as aggregates, would enable building walls to absorb NOx from air. This study found that TiO2 has the potential to reduce ambient concentrations of NOx from areas where this pollutant becomes concentrated under solar irradiation. Chapter 3 presents the life cycle assessment of architecturally integrated glass–glass photovoltaics in building facades to find the appropriate material composition for a multicolored PV façade offering improved environmental performance. Chapter 4 shows that urban office buildings lacking appropriate orientation experienced indoor overheating. Chapter 5 details four modeling approaches that were implemented to estimate buildings’ response towards load shedding. Chapter 6 covers the life cycle GHG emissions of high-rise residential housing block to discover opportunities for environmental improvement. Chapter 7 discusses an LCA framework that took into account variation in the service life of buildings associated with the use of different types of materials. Chapter 8 presents a useful data mining algorithm to conduct life cycle asset management in residential developments built on transport systems.

Microreactors are small devices with sub-millimeter internals which have superb mass and heat transfer. Initially, they were used for reactions with very high demands on the latter, e.g. very exothermic reactions, gas-liquid reactions with interfacial transport issues, reactions with very fast kinetics which demands even faster mixing, and more. In this way, the processing window was opened widely and, also due to the minute volumes only present in the reaction zone, safe processing under otherwise hazardous conditions was enabled. This includes processing of reactions which are prone to thermal runaway and in the explosive regime. Scale-up of promising reactions and products which was hindered with conventional technology is now possible using the new equipment. This has widened the process development possibilities in chemical industry.In the last years, micro process technology was not only used for the very problematic synthetic issues which formerly had a dead-end position in industry’s process development. Rather, the scope of chemical reactions to be processed in microreactors was considerably widened by exploring new process conditions with regard to temperature, pressure, concentration, solvents, and more. This is commonly referred to as flow chemistry. This allowed to reduce the processing time-scale for many reactions to the minute range or even below which fits well to the residence times of microreactors. In addition, the process integration of several reactions in one flow to a multi-step synthesis has opened a new door in molecular diversity as well as system and process complexity. The same holds for the combination of reactions and separations in micro-flow. To achieve throughputs relevant for industrial production, smart scale-out to milli-flow units has established and supplemented the num­bering-up concept (parallelization of microchannels/-reactors operated under equal conditions).New innovations and enabling technologies need anyhow evaluation and benchmarking with conventional technology on the full-system level. Yet, microreactor technology has in the last years deepened so much into process intensification on a holistic scale that the focus increasingly is given towards the process dimension—to process design and automation, real-case applications, cost analysis, life-cycle assessment, and more. The impact on cost competitiveness and sustainability becomes well assessed.Facing this very recent scientific achievement, the special issue “Design and Engineering of Microreactor and Smart-Scaled Flow Processes” of the journal Processes aims to cover recent advances in the development of microreactor and smart-scaled flow processes towards the process level — in the sense as given above.